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Hello List,
Here is the review from Barrons online.
Beats Dramamine
These PC tools can help you deal with a rocky market
Reviewed By Theresa W. Carey
Edited by Randall W. Forsyth
Starting the new year by lick ing last year's wounds
probably wasn't on your "To Do" list, but at least
you've got a lot of company. While we can't do
anything about the Nasdaq roller coaster, we'll
present you with a variety of new and upgraded sites,
priced from free to high, and add to them best wishes
for a successful new year.
Top of the Line: Ringing in the new year with a new
corporate identity is the publisher of TradeStation,
formerly Omega Research, now TradeStation Technologies
Ltd. It has also acquired a directaccess online
brokerage firm, the former OnlineTrading.com, which
now goes by the name of TradeStation Securities.
B4Utrade (top) lets you track your stocks, tick by
tick, while TradeStation Pro (bottom) gives you the
ability to customize your screen almost any way you
want.
TradeStation Pro, the latest incarnation of the
company's technical-analysis and trading-strategy
program, was rolled out last fall. Like its
predecessors, the Pro version has technical-analysis
techniques galore, as well as strategy development and
testing. TradeStation Pro is endlessly customizable,
and allows you to create your own view of the market
that includes Level II quotes, time and sales tables,
and techniques for fundamental, as well as technical,
analysis, all accessing their 30year historical
database. My favorite feature is its ability to
develop and test trading strategies, which now work on
tick-by-tick, real-time data, a boon for frequent
traders.
It comes at a price, however: After a 10-day free
trial, it will run you $300 a month. Exchange fees,
except for Level II quotes, are built into the tab, so
it's not as bad as it looks-streaming real-time data
can run $50-$100 a month all by itself. You also get
the software and data mercifully bereft of ads.
In the next quarter, the company plans to integrate
online trading with the analytical tools, allowing
users to automate their trades according to the
strategies they've tested and developed. The
online-broker arm of the company uses intelligent
order routing to get the best price for a trade. If
you're a serious, frequent trader, it's worth the
10-day trial to evaluate whether TradeStation Pro is
for you. It's best for those with high-speed Internet
access and a fast computer.
Mid-Range Value: Recently launched B4Utrade.com has
put together an everevolving group of research tools
aimed at frequent traders. Designed to display the
information requested on a single full browser screen
(rather than requiring the user to scroll around in
search of elusive data), B4Utrade includes a stock
screener that picks up companies that have been
mentioned in a specific news medium, such as CNBC, or
have announced mergers, splits or spinoffs. The
"Institutional Piggyback" section lets you track what
brokerage firms, fund managers and individuals have
upgraded or downgraded. Speaking of CNBC, there's a
window with a slightly delayed video feed that runs in
Real Player for those with fast Internet connections.
You can set up 10 portfolios of 10 stocks; each will
update in real-time and give links to news and ongoing
chats, if available. If you want to look at more than
10 at a time, B4Utrade's "Streaming Wall of Stocks"
lets you set up 40 ticker symbols that update with
each trade. I like the "Top 10" lists, which can be
set up by industry, exchange, price range or market
cap. As with the screener, you can quickly save the
designated stocks to a portfolio list.
B4Utrade has been open to the public just a few months
now, and it's adding new services frequently. Coming
by the end of the month are Level II quotes, time and
sales tables, and options montages. The publisher also
plans to add "most-active calls and puts" to the Top
10 lists, which is not a widely available feature. The
fee is $25 a month, which, given its features, is
reasonable. I'd like to see the portfolio feature read
from the user's actual holdings; currently the
"portfolio return" calculation is based on an equal
number of shares of each stock on the list.
Free: Portfolio Science (www.portfolioscience.com)
analyzes your portfolio holdings and calculates the
dollar amount it is likely to fluctuate daily, weekly,
monthly or yearly. The calculations allow users to
figure out the source of the risk in their holdings,
based on historic volatility. More important from the
standpoint of modern portfolio theory, you can see how
the components work together to diversify away risk.
Financial Engines (www.financialengines.com) also lets
you look at the risk in your portfolio, but the
purpose of that site is to let you know the
probability that you'll hit a particular target at
some point in the future. Portfolio Science shows you
the risk inherent in your portfolio right now.
To test the Portfolio Science calculations, I created
a sample portfolio of five stocks, with a total value
(on January 3, 2001) of approximately $115,000. Based
on the stocks held in this portfolio, Portfolio
Science says it's likely to fluctuate 4.7% today, 9.6%
this week and up to 41.6% over the next year. You can
analyze what might happen to your portfolio if you add
or sell a particular stock. The big problem with the
Portfolio Science site at present is the bane of the
online investor's existencedata entry. Though the
site's publishers are working on creating direct links
from a variety of brokers, currently you have to enter
your holdings manually. You can enter a purchase date
for a particular stock, and the calculation engine
will look up the closing price on that date, and
adjust for historical splits, which is of some
assistance. Look for the Portfolio Science
calculations to show up on other financial Websites in
the near future.
Our annual in-depth review of online brokerage firms
is in the works already, and you can help. If you're
already a customer of an online broker, let us know
which of their services is your favorite and which
drives you crazy. If you're not yet using an online
broker, please let me know why not.
High on my wish list for online brokerage improvements
is better portfolio analysis. All of the brokers we've
reviewed provide lists of current holdings, but few
offer in-depth performance tracking and analysis. You
can usually check out unrealized gains and losses, but
if you want to check your portfolio's performance over
time, you have to do it somewhere else. What's on your
wish list? What are your gripes? Write us at
electronicinvestor@xxxxxxxxxx
Free lunches are getting skimpier. Following the
demise of free Internet access, notably from Alta
Vista recently, other free ISPs have started to limit
how many hours you can stay online gratis. Juno,
NetZero and Kmart's BlueLight, the biggest free ISPs
still standing, have put ceilings on your free hours
per month. That was aimed mainly at businesses that
were using the services hundreds of hours a month and,
according to the services, were responsible for a
disproportionate amount of their costs. None of which
should be relevant if you use free ISPs for their best
purpose -- as a backup for your primary Internet
access, either highspeed (DSL or cable) or dial-up.
Another, less-publicized free ISP is available for
American Express cardholders at AmexOL. You still get
ads on your browser, but they're less intrusive than
those from the major ISPs. The AmEx software also sits
on your desktop whether you want it or not (you can
shut it off, however).
E-mail comments to editors@xxxxxxxxxxx
--- "M. Simms" <prosys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Wow - that was fast....I wonder how they did it ?
> I mean only 2 WEEKS after release they get a review
> ?
>
> We can't get Omega's TS2000i/SP5 updated after 9
> MONTHS after release ?
>
> Something is drastically wrong with this picture.
>
>
>
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